Ken Griffin.
Ken Griffin
Founder and CEO at Citadel
If there’s one individual who solidified the great South Florida migration during the past two years, it’s Ken Griffin.
The billionaire’s trading firm and hedge fund — the former known as Citadel Securities, the latter as just plain Citadel — announced in June 2022 that they were relocating their collective global headquarters from Chicago to Miami. It wasn’t just the relocation. It was what we’ll call the Ken Griffin Official Seal of Approval for Greater Miami(™) that he stamped upon the city. It defined the general exodus of finance firms from up north to South Florida.
“Miami is a vibrant, growing metropolis that embodies the American Dream — embracing the possibilities of what can be achieved by a community working to build a future together,” Griffin wrote in a staff email in June.
To drive the point home even more deeply, Griffin dissed Citadel’s existing hometown to Bloomberg: “We’re getting to the point that if things don’t change, we’re gone. … Things aren’t changing.” There you had it: The Miami area was up and coming, and Northern stalwarts such as Chicago and New York weren’t as hospitable to financial firms and the like, according to Griffin. (Griffin declined through his office to be interviewed.)
Where exactly was Citadel going to go in South Florida? That’s where Griffin really flashed his power. He signed up Chicago-based developer Sterling Bay to conceive and build an entirely new tower on the waterfront in Miami’s fashionable Brickell.
To build that tower, Griffin’s Citadel in April spent $363 million on a 2.5-acre site — the most expensive land deal so far in Miami history. Citadel later bought a 26-story office building across the street from the site for $286.5 million. It was Miami’s most expensive office deal since the pandemic began in March 2020. (Notice a theme?)
Meanwhile, the Citadel firms’ own exodus has already begun. The company is this year adding hundreds of employees in Miami, either through relocations or local hires. —T.A.
